In some order processing, manufacturing and production facilities, goods and materials are moved from one location to another location in rolling carts, baskets or bins. Sometimes these rolling carts, baskets or bins are pushed, pulled or carried by humans. In the more advanced, automated facilities, the rolling carts, baskets or bins may be carried, pushed or pulled by autonomously-navigating mobile robots, which offer considerable advantages and benefits over using human beings to perform the same tasks.
U.S. Publication No. 2014-0350725 by LaFary et al. discloses an autonomous mobile robot for handling job assignments in a physical environment inhabited by stationary and non-stationary obstacles. The autonomous mobile robot comprises a robot base controller and an onboard navigation system that, in response to receiving a job assignment specifying a job location that is associated with one or more job operations, activates the onboard navigation system to automatically determine a path that the mobile robot should use to drive to the specified job location. If the mobile robot determines that using an initially-selected path could cause the mobile robot to run into a stationary or non-stationary obstacle in the physical environment, such as a closed door, a person or another mobile robot, then the onboard navigation system of the mobile robot automatically determines a new path to use that avoids the stationary and non-stationary obstacles, and automatically drives the mobile robot to the job location using the new path, thereby avoiding contact or collisions with those obstacles. After the mobile robot arrives at the job location, it automatically performs the job operations associated with that job location.
U.S. Publication No. 2014-0365258 by Vestal et al. discloses a job management system for a fleet of autonomously-navigating mobile robots operating in an automated physical environment, such as a factory, hospital, order processing facility or office building. The job management system includes a map defining a floor plan, a set of virtual job locations and a set of one or more virtual job operations associated with virtual job locations. The job management system automatically determines the actual locations and actual job operations for the job requests, and intelligently selects a suitable mobile robot from the fleet of mobile robots to handle each job request based on the current status and/or the current physical configuration and capabilities of the selected mobile robot. The job management system also sends commands to the selected mobile robot that cause the selected mobile robot to automatically drive to the actual job location, and/or perform the actual job operations.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,688,275 to LaFary et al. discloses methods and systems for ensuring that autonomously-navigating mobile robots are able to detect and avoid positive obstacles in a physical environment, such as objects suspended from a ceiling or other structure, long table tops with legs at the ends (and no legs in the middle), and obstacles that stick out from the edge of other objects, like keyboard trays, which are typically hard for mobile robots to detect due to their relatively unusual placement and orientation in the physical world. U.S. Pat. No. 8,688,275 also discloses systems and methods that enable autonomously-navigating mobile robots to detect and avoid driving into negative obstacles (i.e., voids in the physical environment), such as gaps or holes in the floor, a cliff or ledge, or a descending flight of stairs.
But the advantages and benefits of using autonomously-navigating robots for transporting rolling carts, baskets and bins around an order processing warehouse, a production facility, an office building, or any other type of facility, have heretofore been significantly limited due to the inability of conventional autonomously-navigating mobile robots to reliably and consistently carry out, without human supervision or assistance, certain operations necessarily associated with transporting carts, baskets or bins around a facility. These necessary operations include, for example: (1) locating and identifying a specific cart, basket or bin specified for a job request; (2) automatically engaging with the specified cart, basket or bin to pick it up and secure it to the mobile robot prior to transporting it to a new location; and (3) automatically releasing the rolling cart, bin or basket from the mobile robot to drop it off at a specified destination, without the release/drop off operation changing the desired resting location and/or orientation of the rolling cart, bin or basket at the specified destination.